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Smyth: Clark still focused on fairy-tale ending — but B.C.'s desire for change may be too great to overcome

Michael Smyth

Photograph by: Ginger Sedlarova
, The Province

After starting this election campaign 20 points behind in the polls, all Christy Clark wants to talk about now is making history.

Though the NDP still lead — especially in riding-rich Metro Vancouver, where the election will likely be won or lost — Clark has pulled the left-for-dead Liberals into surprising contention.

But what if she loses? I asked Clark if she would stay on as Opposition leader, and she was miffed by the question.

“Would you ask Adrian Dix that?” she snapped, referring to her NDP rival.

“I don’t spend a speck of time thinking about what would happen, except to work toward a win.

“Nobody goes into the Stanley Cup finals thinking, ‘Oh, gee, I wonder what golf clubs I should put in my bag for tomorrow?’ They’re thinking. ‘How am I going to win?’”

Clark’s path to a shocking upset victory is still a rocky one, though.

The polling numbers surged in her direction since the TV debate, but not enough to erase Dix’s advantage.

But the mere fact a Liberal upset win is being discussed as a possibility is an amazing thing for a politician and a party written off more times than a three-martini lunch.

“Throughout this entire campaign I have focused on jobs and the economy,” Clark said.

“People are really switched on now to these economic questions. I’m heartened by that.”

I’d say the Liberals are more than “heartened” the campaign has been framed around their core issues — more like “amazed” the NDP let them get away with it.

It’s only now the NDP are finally running ads focused on the Liberals’ record of scandal and mismanagement: the HST double-cross, the $6-million B.C. Rail plea bargain, the millions more spent on brazenly partisan government ads.

After sleep-walking through most of the campaign — and allowing Clark to take the offensive — Dix’s late-rounds counter-punching may have done enough to stop the NDP’s slide in the polls.

But Dix has still been out-worked, out-hustled and out-campaigned by Clark.

By inexplicably ignoring the Liberal record in the early days of the campaign, he allowed Clark to take the initiative on her strongest issues.

By refusing to say precisely what he would do — on the labour code, fracking, raw-log exports, balancing the budget — Dix provoked voter anxiety about his real agenda.

To extend Clark’s hockey metaphor, the NDP played like a team with a 6-0 lead that goes into a defensive shell in the third period — only to be shocked by a 6-5 score with a minute left to play.

Dix has been too cautious, too defensive. Liberal campaign manager Mike McDonald has been easily available to the media, NDP campaign manager Brian Topp has refused to speak to the press.

What does it all tell you? They didn’t want to make a mistake; didn’t want to take a risk. In the process, the NDP let Clark back into the fight.

But, despite a gutsy effort, a 12-year Liberal record may have been too much for Clark to shake off, and voters’ desire for change may have simply been too much to overcome.

Despite the gains Christy Clark has made — especially in rural regions of the province — the NDP’s edge in Metro Vancouver may prove decisive.

If Dix runs the table in Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby and the Tri-Cities, it won’t matter if Clark punches through in the province’s north and interior.

And then there are the internal problems. There are people in the Liberal party who never wanted Clark as leader, and the knives may come out soon after the votes are counted.

In the waning days of the campaign, Global TV reported on a Liberal splinter group that calls itself the “801 Club.” Their mission: begin the movement to dump Clark, starting at 8:01 p.m. on Tuesday, one minute after the polls close.

“I am not going to let them distract me,” Clark said of Liberal dissidents.

“They want to defeat us and what we’re trying to do. I am not going to let them put their personal agenda before the agenda of the province.”

Her own agenda now is to shock the world, prove the naysayers wrong, and complete the most amazing comeback in B.C. political history.

Fairy tales do come true sometimes. But usually not. Voters will write the ending to this one on Tuesday.

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